Monday, February 4, 2013

We were out in the sun for too long after a delicious but late breakfast. Nothing to drink and swollen feet led to blisters and frustration. But many adventures taking in everything we could, reflected here in a few of the pictures I took.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

In this busy busy city we spend most of our time on the streets. So we get to have a feeling for the public life that takes place in front of everyone. From that maybe we can guess about the private life people have behind curtains, doors, or walls.

The public life is noisy and out there. Though we see women there are mostly men. Groups of men, men by themselves, men squatting in dirty sarongs, men in uniforms in front of guard posts, men hawking wares, young men walking in groups.

It's the tropics and many of the walls you see are rotting. We looked at housing yesterday that I guess was from the late '40s, about the time of independence. Maybe Soviet-inspired, maybe funded by the USSR. Pretty crowded and decrepit like the streets around them in Slave Island. A block away we saw an elephant in shackles, looking pretty sad, looking like it just tolerated the human being who was following it.

The public street is full of the sounds of horns, beeping, honking, sporadic, steady. And the sound of traffic, wheels careening around curves, trucks and buses jangling in the potholes. Behind the walls there is a kind of quiet, like behind the walls of our house, and family life takes place, women and children, who you don't see many of in downtown colombo. Nut you also see children being taught to beg, dirty children with bare feet, in contrast to the children of our hosts, quiet, obedient, studious.

Somehow the streets we've walked on seem to have less in the way of foods or wares to sell. So the feeling is distinct from Mexico, where it seems the streets are packed with merchandise. We haven't been to the Pettah though, where this kind of action is probably more apparent.

After a night spent mostly awake my mind isn'tworking too well this morning, so I'm not writing up to speed, but here are some good photos from yesterday!

Colombo is a city of the developing world. Every ethnicity and religion seems to be here and the evidence is seen in architecture. Hindu and Buddhist temples and shrines, mosques, and churches of every stripe are found around every corner. Buses, trucks, and tuk tuks spew smoke and particulates into the air, and everyone, rushing, is on their horn. That is the noise of the city.

Wide old waterways near the Fort Railway station and every sort of beggar, toothless, eyeless, limbless. Hawkers sell the Sri Lankan flag this weekend, independence weekend. It is hot and humid but there is a breeze. There are sidewalks intermingled with piles of sand and construction materials, ancient braided trees, rotting old concrete buildings.

We have breakfast in a coffee place designed in Southern California with a menu to match, every kind of latte and chai and coffee and tea on tap. A few blocks away the city's main park, a huge modern stadium, old museum buildings, families, and piles of construction materials inside and out. Last night we walked to the ocean as the sun was getting lower and reached a train station right on the water in a blighted part of town, a fire burning right outside an old marketplace, mostly men in sarongs, almost no women, but at one corner a business college filled with hopeful young people who want to be the commercial leaders of this place.

English is compulsory and it seems that all of the supposed 10% of Sri Lankans who speak English are here in colombo. We'll see as we travel farther afield. Hot as it is it seems we can't get enough liquids. The chaotic railway station, flies, fans, sweat, but we got the ticket or almost got the ticket we want for next week, a reserved seat on the Kandy-Badulla line through the mountains. First class and observation car tickets were sold out and the hosts we emailed ahead of time who nicely agreed to help never did.

We are staying on a quiet back street called Barnes place, an old English mansion built about a hundred years ago. The quiet here belies what's outside the gates and a block away, a vibrant, dirty, noisy, living city. We live in the so-called developed world. Subways, sidewalks, a certain crowd control are things we take for granted. Stop here to look at a temple and you attract someone with a sarong who tells you what fierce blue gods are depicted on its walls and asks for money for his storytelling. An elephant in shackles, tuk tuks stopping right in front of you telling you to jump inside, many police giving many tickets.

These few words don't do justice to all we've see in these 24 hours but they are a sampler of the things we've seen and done here in Colombo. Here's a picture of our portico and quiet garden.

About Me

I communicate science to non-scientists. My interest in the intersection between art and science, which I consider to be closely related practices, is the focus of two essay collections I am working on. As a Harvard PhD I realized that the work we do in the library and laboratory, while worthy in and of itself, does not necessarily translate to normal people. Bridging that gap is my goal in my teaching practice and in these posts. I teach college sophomores at Boston University and I teach in the sustainability program at the Boston Architectural College.